A Context-based Representation of Organizational Structures
Alexandre Gachet
Patrick Brézillon
Department of IT Management
University of Hawaii at Manoa
2404 Maile Way A202
Honolulu, HI 96822
USA
gachet@acm.org
LIP6
University Paris 6
9, rue du Capitaine Scott
75015 Paris
France
Patrick.Brezillon@lip6.fr
Abstract1
Traditional companies used to be authoritarian and built
around hierarchical organizational charts. Facing more
dynamic environments in recent history, many companies
experimented with newer forms of organization, usually
cutting down long decision paths and fostering lean structures
able to react to rapid changes in the marketplace. We believe
that the future of organizational structures lies in hybrid,
dynamic models allowing enterprises to internally move from
bureaucratic to adhocratic structures at will, according to
changing contexts and focuses of attention.
This paper presents a four-level model representing
organizational structures in a decision process, including
social networks, enterprises, communities of practice, and task
forces. Then, it discusses how context intervenes in this fourlevel model and the role of context at each level. We illustrate
our model and context in a scenario inspired by a real-world
application.
Introduction2
Most of today's companies are built around organizational
structures ranging from bureaucracy to adhocracy.
According to Weber, Henderson, and Parsons (1947), the
attributes of a modern bureaucracy include impersonality
and the implementation of a system of authority that is
practically indestructible. Toffler (1970) sees it as a network
of roles fulfilled by individuals (in opposition to a network
of individuals, such as a social network). Bureaucratic
organizations usually deal with routine operations.
At the other end of the spectrum, an adhocracy represents
any form of organization capturing opportunities, solving
problems, and getting results (Waterman 1992). Beairsto
(1997) defines it as “the term used to describe the flexible
structure of multidisciplinary teams which is best suited for
complex tasks in a dynamic and unpredictable environment.”
It can be characterized by shared values across various
splinter groups, cultures, and individuals. An adhocracy is
not organized around formal rules or regulations, and it does
not provide standardized procedures for dealing with routine
problems. It is instead a response to environmental pressure
(Mintzberg and Quinn 1996), meant to cope with exceptional
1
Research partly supported by Swiss NSF grant Nr. PBFR2-104340.
Copyright © 2005, American Association for Artificial Intelligence
(www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.
2
situations and adapt quickly to changes within its
environment.
One crucial difference between both structures is the way
information and knowledge flow inside the structure. In the
bureaucracy, they flow bottom-up along a hierarchical path,
before coming down again along the same or a different
hierarchy. In the adhocracy, hierarchical ties are relaxed and
information and knowledge mostly flow through lateral
relations (Orlikowski 1991).
This paper introduces a four-level organizational model
whose goal is to show how an organization can dynamically
move internally from bureaucratic to adhocractic structures,
according to changing contexts and focuses of attention in its
environment. This model is based on the explicit
consideration of context in the representation of knowledge
and reasoning, an approach rooted in knowledge-based
systems and artificial intelligence (AI) research. This model
identifies different types of context at different levels of
generality. It is presented with greater detail in Gachet and
Brézillon (2005).
This paper is organized as follows. The next section
presents the four-level model representing organizational
structures in a decision process. The following section
describes how context intervenes in this four-level model.
Then, we discuss the four-level model and the role of context
in an example scenario, before concluding with a discussion
of future research.
A Four-Level Model of Organizations
This section introduces a four-level classification model that
explains how a structure at a given level can emerge from
one or several lower-level structures. The discussion is lead
on the basis of instantiations of organizational structures
often discussed in the literature.
Figure 1 presents an integrative view of various
organizational structures, including social networks,
enterprises, communities of practice, and task forces. Gachet
and Brézillon (2005) show that these different organizational
structures can be organized in a multi-level model spanning
from a less structured human level (at the bottom) to a more
structured adhocratic level (at the top). Each level arises
from at least one of the lower levels. The pyramid-like shape
is used to express the fact that higher level structures are
organized around narrower, more specific goals, than lower
level structures.
The next sections review the four proposed levels: namely
the human, organization, community, and adhocracy levels.
For illustrative purposes, each section describes at least one
specific organizational structure belonging to each level.
social network and individuals in the environment of the
social network.
Ties between individuals of a social network can be of
different natures: familial ties, lifelong friend ties, marital
ties, business partner ties – all are important for people to
obtain the fundamentals of identity, affection, emotional and
material support (Rheingold 2000), i.e. the recognition of
their existence by others. Ties are "socially-oriented" in
many real life situations. Trust does not play an important
part, and individuals generally belong to several social
networks where they do not play crucial roles.
Organization Level
Figure 1. Four levels of organizational structures
Human Level
The human level is represented at the bottom of Figure 1.
This level plays a double function in our model: it supports
and encompasses the other levels at the same time. As shown
in Figure 1, it supports the other levels because individuals
are the elementary constituents of the entire model. In other
words, the three upper levels are made up of individuals
inevitably coming from social networks belonging to this
human level. This level supports the dynamic building of
upper level structures that help information flow more
rapidly and easily among individuals.
However, the human level also encompasses the other
levels, precisely because actors in an organization, a
community, or an adhocracy still belong to their grassroots
human level. This second function is a direct recognition of
the concept of “embeddedness” (Granovetter, 1985), that is
to say “the argument that the behavior and institutions to be
analyzed are so constrained by ongoing social relations that
to construe them as independent is a grievous
misunderstanding” (p. 482). In other words, an individual
seldom belongs to only one level of the model; at any time,
he belongs to several levels, but in varying degrees.
Moreover, the time spent in an upper-level organizational
structure influences the number of ties in the social networks
of this human level, as well as the strength of existing ties.
A social network, as a structure of the human level, is an
organizational structure comprised of individuals and ties
(e.g. Wellman and Carrington 1988; Hanneman 2001). The
main characteristics of a social network are its flexible
structure, a lack of hierarchy, and a socialization around
individual goals. We hold that only a weak discriminating
factor allows for the differentiation of individuals in the
The meaning of the organization level adopted in this model
remains closely related to social perspectives. For our
purpose, we consider an organization as “a combination of
human effort in a relatively stable network of social
relations” (van Aken 1982). An organization is structured
around a concern related to the organization itself (i.e. the
enterprise). Therefore, the organization level is also closely
related to bureaucratic concepts.
In an informal way, an enterprise (which in our model is
an instantiation of the organizational level) is often described
as a collection of organizations and people formed to create
and deliver products and services to customers in a
competitive marketplace. The term used in this sense
encompasses corporations, small businesses, non-profit
institutions, government bodies, and other kinds of
organizations. Successful enterprises are organized around
shared visions. This shared vision gives the enterprise an
identity, even though individuals in the enterprise can follow
independent, modular goals in their day-to-day activities.
Community Level
A community can be defined in a bottom-up fashion as a
unified body of individuals emerging from an existing social
network with some shared element. Instances of such
communities are communities of practice, virtual
communities, communities of interest, communities of
relationship, etc. As previously mentioned, communities are
rooted in the organization and human levels. A community
structure emerges when a focus on a specific domain arises
among the individuals of an existing social network and/or
organization. This shared concern, whose substance can vary
widely from community to community, gives the community
a collective context and individuals organize as actors with
roles. Interaction inside a community is usually informal and
spontaneous rather than procedurally formalized.
Communities of practice (CoP), as structures of the
community level, are semi-structured groups of people who
share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic,
and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area
by interacting on an ongoing basis (Wenger et al. 2002).
They have federated goals and shared contexts. We refer to
this domain of knowledge as a focus of interest. There is a
Table 1. Comparison between the different levels and structures
Human (SN)
Organization
Community
Adhocracy
Generating
factor
Discriminating factor
Shared vision
Focus of interest
Mission
Entrance
By natural assimilation
Hiring
Free or by co-optation
By role-based selection
Exit
By natural rejection
Dismissal or voluntary exit
Free or by co-optation
After mission accomplished
or canceled
Type of goal
Independent, individual
goals
Independent, modular goals
oriented towards the shared
vision
Convergent goal; exchange
of experience, information
and knowledge
Shared goal; supply of
information, knowledge, and
experience.
Goal definition
None
Attain vision
Share domain interest, keep
domain expertise; accept
peer judgement
Accomplish mission
Members
Individuals
Actors
(individuals + hierarchical
roles)
Actors (individuals + roles)
Actors (individuals or digital
entities + “on the fly” roles)
Members'
autonomy
High
Medium (hierarchical
authority)
Medium (peer pressure)
Weak (high integration)
Shared
language
No
No, partial at best
Yes
Yes
Degree of
organization
Weak, numerous and nonorganized; based on
functional ties between
individuals
Medium, based on the
organizational chart
Medium, based on the
production/consumption
balance of the actors
High, strongly related to the
mission and the
organizational context
Lifetime
Perennial
Long-lasting
Variable
Limited
kind of implicit structure in a CoP. In pursuit of the
convergent goals inherent to the focus of interest, actors in a
CoP employ common practices, work with the same tools
and express themselves in a common language. Through
such common activity, they come to hold similar beliefs and
value systems (Lave and Wenger 1991).
Adhocracy Level
The term adhocracy is often used in opposition to the term
bureaucracy. It describes a structural configuration that “is
able to fuse experts drawn from different disciplines into
smoothly functioning ad hoc project teams” (Mintzberg
1979). An adhocracy is not organized around formal rules or
regulations, and it does not provide standardized procedures
for dealing with routine problems. It is instead a response to
environmental pressure (Mintzberg and Quinn 1996), meant
to cope with exceptional situations and adapt quickly to
changes within its environment.
A task force, as a structure of the adhocracy level,
emerges around an external, unpredictable event, in the welldefined context of the enterprise. Task forces are built on the
fly and assembled around short-lived and highly contextual
focuses of interest that we call missions. The entire task force
is oriented towards its expected results and thus actors have a
strong motivation in the realization of the mission and each
actor assumes an active role to satisfy it. Roles are attributed
to actors on the fly, according to the needs of the current
context. In particular, as the context can change during the
lifetime of a task force, roles (and the corresponding tasks)
can be redistributed several times among the actors.
Table 1 summarizes the differences between the human,
organization, community, and adhocracy levels according to
several criteria.
Context in the four-level model
Brézillon and Pomerol (1999) consider in AI three parts for
the context of a focus, namely the external knowledge, the
contextual knowledge and the proceduralized context. At a
given step of a decision process, one distinguishes the part of
the context that is relevant at this step of the process and the
art that is not relevant. The latter part is called external
knowledge (EK). The former part is called contextual know-
Table 2. External and internal shared context at each level
External Context
Human level
Internal Context
A cloud of contextual knowledge pieces; “free electrons”
belonging to the collective memory
Knowledge about upper levels, from where structured
knowledge comes back
Describes the expected behavior in a social network
Built progressively over long periods of time; low formalism
Knowledge cannot be proceduralized directly. Instead,
knowledge is proceduralized by a top-down movement from
upper (more structured) levels
Organization level General information about an organization, the rules of the
market (e.g. supply and demand model)
Implicit rules and correct procedure for building and
maintaining a community inside the organization (e.g.
through a well-defined hierarchical channel)
Shaped around the vision of the organization
Built slowly and progressively, forming an “organization
memory”
Loose
Proceduralized from the external context of the organization
Contains knowledge about the type of the organization, its
size, its target market, its landmarks, key individuals, etc.
Community level
Implicit rules and correct procedure for building adhocracies
on the fly
Past experience gained from former communities, results
obtained, etc.
Shaped around the common benefit of the community
Built progressively but at a fast rate, forming a “community
memory”
Low pressure from lower levels
Specialized; leads to high cohesiveness
Proceduralized from the external context of the community
Contains knowledge about the kind of actors required, the
type of problems addressed, current results and failures, etc.
Adhocracy level
General impacts and/or effects of adhocracies on the
underlying communities and organizations
Intertwined with the mission of the adhocracy
Created on the fly with the adhocracy itself
Kind of organizational structures developed at that level
High pressure from lower levels
Dense; leads to strong cohesiveness
Proceduralized from the external context of the adhocracy
Contains knowledge about the authority of the adhocracy in
the underlying organization, the way to mobilize resources
from underlying levels, etc.
ledge (CK), and obviously depends on the agent and the
process at hand. Always at a given step of a process, a part
of the contextual knowledge is proceduralized to be used at
this step of the process. We call this the proceduralized
context (PC). The proceduralized context is the part of the
contextual knowledge that is invoked, assembled, structured
and situated according to the given focus. Thus, a given
focus and its associated context are interdependent.
Structures at each level are associated with a shared
context. Two levels must be distinguished in any shared
context, namely the external context and the internal context.
In general, the external context contains relevant information
about the underlying levels and the environment of the
organizational structure. The internal context is intertwined
with the generating factor of the corresponding level
(discriminating factor, vision, focus, or mission).
At the human level, individuals retrieve information
explaining how to behave in the social network. However,
this shared context contains very general pieces of contextual
knowledge that individuals cannot transform directly in a
proceduralized context for their individual contexts. For
example, a piece of contextual knowledge in a society could
be “any individual must pay taxes”, but the relationships for
the individuals between the taxes they pay and the actual
administration of funds (e.g., lightning of the streets and
police enforcement for the security) is not immediately
perceived. Moreover, all individuals are not equal with
respect to the amount they are taxed.
At the organization level, the internal shared context
grows continually during the lifetime of the organization,
building what is called the “organization memory”. Its
contents are very varied and include all the knowledge
related to the organization.
At the community level, the internal shared context allows
a strong interaction that facilitates information retrieval by
any actor of the community and speeds up the briefing of
new members. Contextual knowledge in a community
represents specialized knowledge. As a consequence, actors
in a community frequently use a highly technical language,
knowing that other actors will understand it immediately.
Table 3. Organizational structures of the example scenario
Context
Social Networks
Organizations
Normal state
(All)
Robots Manufacturers, Inc. Several (based on the
company organization
chart)
(None)
Alert state
Company + Maintenance
contractor
(discriminating factor:
“Dealing with the failing
machine tool”)
Robots Manufacturers, Inc. Manufacturing CoP
(including employees on
General Maintenance, Ltd. the production line and
representatives of the
manufacturer of the failing
machine tool)
Specialized worker
Shop foreman
Production manager
Maintenance expert
Design state
Company + Supplier
(discriminating factor:
“Supplying Robots
Manufacturers, Inc.)
Robots Manufacturers, Inc. Executive committee of the Maintenance expert
company
Production manager
RS Electronics, Ltd.
Manufacturing CoP
Shop foreman
Purchasing manager
Inventory manager
Director
Implementation state
Company
(discriminating factor:
“Working for Robots
Manufacturers, Inc.”)
Robots Manufacturers, Inc. Manufacturing CoP
This specialized language (or shared context) allows the
maximization of the communication bandwidth between
actors of the community. Moreover, its understanding can be
seen as a kind of barrier to entry for new members.
Finally, at the adhocracy level, the internal context is
created and developed on the fly during the setting-up of the
adhocracy. The social pressure within the enterprise on the
adhocracy makes this internal context rich (large access of
the adhocracy to the resources of the enterprise, for example)
and gives a strong cohesiveness to the group. Table 2
summarizes the contents of the various shared contexts.
Example Scenario
The example scenario presented in Gachet and Brézillon
(2005), even though simplified, remains in essence typical of
organizational decision processes. The company used in the
scenario is a typical, middle-sized manufacturing company
(called Robots Manufacturing, Inc.) producing ten different
types of robots. A problem is detected (a machine
breakdown in the production line), people that will be
involved in the decision gather, information is collected,
alternatives are identified and evaluated, and a decision is
made, implemented, and assessed to be sure that it does not
lead to new problems. In this section, we revisit the informal
presentation of the scenario using the four-level model
introduced in the previous sections of this paper.
Whereas most definitions of a decision process start with
the detection of a problem, we advocate a broader definition
of the decision context, encompassing elements that exist
and evolve even when the situation does not present
exceptional events. We use the social networks paradigm (at
the human level in Figure 1) to support this claim. In the
context of Robots Manufacturing, Inc., there exists different
social networks in association with possible discriminating
Communities
Task force
Director
Shop foreman
Specialized workers
factors. Examples of discriminating factors include
“Working for Robots Manufacturers” (the company).
The Robots Manufacturers, Inc. enterprise is organized
around a traditional hierarchical organizational chart and
breaks up in departments and units. This natural partitioning
of the company gives a good idea of the communities that
emerge intra muros. For example, marketing people
represent inside the company a structure that can be
considered as a community of practice.
When the unpredicted machine breakdown occurs, a
mission (“problem to fix”) appears in the context of the
company (“normal state”) and moves the enterprise to a new
context (“alert state”). Both the mission and its context have
to be considered jointly. Both mobilize a new group of
individuals (the task force) coming from social networks
and/or communities (e.g., the manufacturing community of
the enterprise). All the members of this new task force have
a same concern for the mission and are sensitive to its
context.
Actors organize their knowledge according to the mission.
The production manager is able to proceduralize the
contextual knowledge and to turn the event into some
meaningful knowledge (in that case, retrieve the phone
number of the maintenance contractor and ask an expert to
come as soon as possible).
The maintenance expert, once on the site, translates the
problem into a diagnosis and provides the company with a
better understanding of the consequences of the failure in
terms of duration (“the machine tool will be unavailable for
about five days”).
The maintenance expert, having pinpointed the exact
consequences of the failure, moves the enterprise context
from the “alert state” to the “design state”, thus creating a
new (mission, context) pair and, consequently, reshaping the
task force. In the design state, alternatives have to be
identified and evaluated. The production manager
proceduralizes the sensed knowledge (“machine unavailable
for five days”) into more useful knowledge (“30% reduction
of capacity for production processes x and y”) to propose a
decision alternative that will be analyzed by the director. The
director can in turn ask for the advice of other executives
(for example, the shop foreman if the alternative changes the
production planning, the purchasing manager if the
alternative affects purchases, or the inventory manager if the
alternative changes the expected storage quantities).
The production manager can produce as many alternatives
as necessary, which can reshape the task force as often as
necessary. However, once one of the alternatives is agreed
upon by all the actors of the task force, the director fully
assumes his role of decision maker and decides to implement
the new plan. This moves the enterprise context from the
“design state” to the “implementation state”, thus creating a
new (mission, context) pair and, again, reshaping the task
force.
Table 3 summarizes the four (focus, context) pairs
involved in our scenario, together with the corresponding
social networks and task forces.
Concluding Remarks and Future Work
This paper has introduced a four-level model that can be
used to explain how a company moves from one
organizational structure to another when its context changes.
As a basic model, however, the proposed paradigm still
suffers from a number of limitations. In particular, it does
not consider the sociological aspects related to the dynamic
reshaping of organizational structures inside the company. It
is obvious that a dynamic model of organization is socially
transformative and its impact on the relationship between
workers and work organization should be analyzed from the
perspective of the sociology of work.
Another step in this research will be to leverage the
proposed model in order to infer a framework of technology
support adapted to the different organizational structures.
We believe that each level of the proposed model can benefit
from a different kind of support technology (for example,
decision support systems (DSS) at the adhocracy level,
computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) at the
community level, management information systems at the
organization level and office automation tools at the human
level). Bringing these different categories of systems into a
coherent framework could be a valuable contribution to the
field of systems integration.
It is our hope that the model presented in this paper
provides a vehicle for researchers to develop dynamic
organizational models.
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